Synchronicity abounds and when those seemingly unrelated elements come together -- magic happens. Life is about patterns and finding the pieces that fit together. So I observe. What seems insignificant alone, coupled with the unexpected, can change your life. So I offer tidbits that may fit your need.

The messengers are gathering in prime formation: 2 butterflies, 3 dragonflies, 5 angels, 7 crows, 11 stars. To truly hear their message, you must kill the ego. Egos are wont to kill the messenger when they dislike the message they are receiving, but that is a useless tactic. The message will simply find you another way, through another messenger.What in the world does this mean?

Accompany that with the quote she included on the work itself -- "Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers." -- Brenda Ueland -- and my imagination was piqued.

Messengers?

My search for a topic for my next NANOWRIMO contest entry brought me on this quest. I did a Google search and came up with a long list of references to Islam. But that's not the direction I wanted to go for 50,000 words.

Another response to 'messages' was not what I expected: Jimi Hendrix! From his song May I Whisper in Your Ear? From the art here, "Stairway to Paradise" by Thomas Kincaid, I bet you were expecting Stairway to Heaven.... No it was Hendrix. May I whisper in your earfrom my heart so you’ll clearly hear...

May I take you awayfrom the evils of todayto the dreams of tomorrow.You know that Heaven...Has no sorrow.You know that Heaven...Has no tomorrow....

Here comes some news...Coming down like lightning...Straight for me and you.People of destructionyour time is out of date...People who’s living crooked,better start getting straight. --Jimi Hendrix

Surprised at the lyrics from a rocker who was outside my modest taste in music, although I admired his abilities and talents and lamented his short life and enjoyed his version of the Star Spangled Banner, I never checked out the depths of the man....his lyrics surprised me. My youngest son saw him with clearer vision than I who lumped him in with 'devil music that will take you straight to hell.' A thought taught by my local church....

And then I clicked on another site and sat up in surprise.

In July, a Sommerville, Mass. resident opened his garden to anyone, invited them to leave messages. Not just any message. His ambition, a bit more cosmic perhaps, invites the sharing of deepest secrets - fears, joys, failures, goals - and leave them behind as an anonymous note, on a scrap of colored paper, to the universe. He agreed to respond to them.

Within 30 days he received 100; now more than 700 and he hopes to receive 1000 before the end of the year. He's established his website crossing the abyss to post his answers as well as the messages.

What messages has the universe tried to tell me? What have I ignored? Should have I acted upon the impulses that urged me to reach out to others, help, smile, share, console? All of those times that would have made me step out of my invisibility and become vulnerable, fearing rejection? Should I have been stronger? Were they as afraid as I? What if I had given more money, food, friendship? What would it have cost me and what would have been the rewards and where would it have all taken me? Paths not taken are certainly ripe for speculation based upon hindsight.

The idea of messengers in our lives intrigues me. I was raised on scripture and the concept of angels in our midst, but our particular sect focused more on social aspects of church and avoided the more mystical aspects of the religion. We celebrated communion, and all of the holy holidays of course. But the holy spirit, speaking in tongues, prophesying, angels, well, we just avoided those scriptures. So now I'm wondering what vital messages have I missed and is it too late?

What is the universe telling me today? I liked Kincaid's words that accompany this piece of art:

"In the most important ways, my life has been a progress. I have been blessed to see my love of painting grow and flourish, my relations with family and friends deepen and mature." — Thomas Kinkade

Gotten any messages lately? I think the one that was meant for me today came from John H. Rhoades:

Do more

Author: John H. Rhoades

Do more than exist; live.Do more than touch; feel.Do more than look; observe.Do more than read; absorb.Do more than hear; listen.Do more than listen; understand.Do more than think; ponder.Do more than talk; say something.

2 comments:

Dawn, I'm so glad the various "messages" on the quilt got your thinking processes churning. My main point is that messages come to us from anywhere and everywhere: and I included mostly winged beings as messengers (in my quilt) because, as you did, I grew up in a church where angels were the chosen messengers for God's word. I was simply a little more inclusive.

I would suggest that you have not missed any vital messages, and it is not too late, because your level of consciousness is just where it should be, as is mine. We can only attune to that which we are capable of comprehending. We can make a decision to pay more attention, to let ourselves be more open and vulnerable, to allow the love we feel to flow more freely rather than holding back out of fear. I believe such decisions put us into another category, where we then are able to comprehend a different order of messages. And this back and forth process is in a continual process of becoming, just like the prime numbers keep going, and going. They are divisible only by themselves, and one. We might say the same thing about ourselves: only we can divide ourselves. But what or whom is the One?

Thank you so much for your thoughts on this: it is great fun to speculate together and see meanings sprout from the conversational seeds!

What a great way to start my morning. I too have never considered the actual lyrics of a Hendrix song.

One of the things I am learning on my journey to a helathier and happier me, is how to listen to different messages. From my inner voices to those on the outside. Learning how to make the best choices for how to respond and/or react.

This post will actually help a lot in considering those choices. Thanks!

Quotes I gotta share...

"The problem is to go into oneself. Go to the darkest parts and the brightest parts and find out what you like and want, and validate that. It's not just a question of art and finding out who you are and making this wonderful thing happen out of yourself, but it's the responsibility to society and caring about other people. A lot of people think art is to be separate, but art is to embrace others - whether to convey something difficult or to talk about light. Work that comes from the spirit, journeys into the spirit are what we need now. Spirit has always been in art." -- Joyce Wieland

""Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity." -- found in a Fortune Cookie

"There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead." -- from The Art of Mending -- Elizabeth Berg

The truth is that many people are self-publishing many books every year and succeeding has a lot to do with understanding what is trying to be done and how. Some of the most famous writers self-published first, including D.H. Lawrence, Anais Nin, James Joyce, and more recently James Redfield, with his Celestine Prophecy. -- J.C. Hewitt

"It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography -- but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off." --Margaret Atwood at the Atwood poetry lecture, in Hay On Wye, Wales, June 1995

There are as many nights as days, and the one is justas long as the other in the year's course. Even a happylife cannot be without a measure of darkness,and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if itwere not balanced by sadness. It is far better to takethings as they come along with patience and equanimity.Carl Jung

As my pediatrician said when I asked him about "-handedness" in my first child, he said that all babies are ambidextrous and inept with both. This has proven to be a useful concept in life, particularly when dealing with certain bureaucracies. -- Jane Steinberg

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. -- Kurt Vonnegut

The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.

-- Robyn Davidson

I was once afraid of people saying, Who does she think she is?Now I have the courage to stand and say, This is who I am. -- Oprah Windfrey

But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. --Lord Byron

"The short story is like an old friend who calls whenever he is in town. We are happy to hear from it; we casually fan the embers of past intimacies, and buy it lunch." --R. Z. Sheppard

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. -- Walter Bagehot

In good writing, words become one with things. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it. --Truman Capote

We cannot choose the things that will happen to us.But

we can choose the attitude we will take toward anything

that happens.Success or failure depends on your attitude.

Alfred A. Montapert

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Fear is like a little garden spider that makes us jump back or the poor lost bee on the steering wheel that we blame for our automobile wreck.The problem in fear is our response -- the way we treat animals or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also the universal scapegoat we blame when we take flight from intimacy or shrink up inside ourselves in a thousand little ways.

--?xml:namespace>Dan Millman

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"All that's different between a rut and the grave is the depth. --Anon.

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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke, Irish stateman 1729-1797

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"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time." -- Abraham Lincoln

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I think that the people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it."--Dwight David Eisenhower, 1959

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[It is] a very American lesson: you need not have been

to a place in order to be from there. —Nirej Sekhon

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Time is the coin of your life.

It is the only coin you have,

and only you can determine how it will be spent,

Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

-- Carl Sandburg

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"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." -- Sarah Bernhardt